How did the French become so easily overran in WW2?

kek, I chuckle a little whenever I think about how hard the Brits got spanked in France that they ended up leaving most of their heavy equipment behind

They went into the war with a very influenced by WW1 doctrine: Don't be opportunistic, flatten everything with artillery before you advance, head up slow and steady and grind your way to victory with methodical attacks. And this is the right and probably only viable way to fight a modern war. It will take a long time, it will be bloody, and movement will be slow. That doesn't matter so much; in the most likely war to break out, France+British Commonwealth vs Germany, between you your countries enjoy a healthy advantage in both population and industry. Then you had the war in Poland, and Germany departing from what was thought to be sensible doctrine by actually detaching armored and motorized formations from artillery support (remember, artillery is slow) to perform deep strikes and chew up rear echelon stuff. And it was devastating, especially combined with the Luftwaffe enormously hampering the ability of the Polish to counterattack or even consolidate.

Result? After about 2 weeks Poland's pretty much crushed, with only a few fortified strongholds holding out.

Obviously, they had to stop this happening to France. A new doctrine needed to be developed, and developed quickly. However, they came up with a bog stupid one, namely "Well, if we put EVERYTHING into our front line, we can try to stop the Germans from breaking through at any point. Reserves are useless because aerial attacks will prevent them from being deployed to where they are needed."

This didn't work, the Germans were able to feint to the north, and then strike through the center with a local concentration of force and advantage of roughly 3:1 at Sedan. And then once they broke through, they started funneling their small but highly mobile panzer forces through the gap, and eventually succeeded in enveloping most of the Franco-British forces, to the tune of a bit under a million men pocketed.

1/2

That's about a third of the French army, and recovering from a loss like that simply wasn't feasible. It took up too much of the available manpower as it was, and France doesn't have the strategic depth that somewhere like Russia does. Fall Gelb starts in May 10th. The battle of Sedan is over by the 15th. The encirclement is completed by the 21st. Fall Rot begins on June 5th. Some 3/4 of France by volume are overrun by the 25th of June. Even if there was a pool of manpower and industry to form a brand new army, it would take too long to conscript and train them before the German spearheads overran your population centers.

Germany was militarily neutered in the treatt of Versailles, the French and British military was willfully ignorant to the extent of their rearmament.

We're not.

Wow the Belgians sound like fucking queers.

They shouldn't even be a country, just make the north part of Netherlands and south part of France.

Belgium has no real national identity and no real culture, just stuff borrowed form their neighbors. It's one of those weird not-countries that are just sort of exists because of politics from a long time ago.

Get a load of this retard.

serious question: why do americans always bring up that france got invaded and defeated when literally every country in Europe was conquered by the Axis powers or neutral?

Because France was a great power, and at least on paper fielded a force that was about equal to Germany's, only to crumple like wet tissue paper.

Because France had more troops and tanks than the Germans.

>BEF doesn't get humiliated in WW1, puts up a decent fight
>LMFAO the British weren't even there like LOL what are you on about it was a French victory
>BEF gets badly beaten in WW2
>LMFAO it was all their fault France fell hahahaha nigga Bongs r shit at war

Yes you are faggot

Also
>Literally every country

Except of course
>Russia
>Britain
>Finland

If France held for 6 months, that's acceptable.

Well done, you've realized Frenchposters are autistic retards with no self awareness.

Because was Poland part 2.

Finland was a co-belligerant with Germany. I assume he's not counting other German allies like Italy and Romania either.

Germany declared War on Finland in 44 actually.

True, but they were getting crushed pretty badly at the time. You have a bunch of other countries joining in the war very late to try to get on the winning side. Turkey, for instance, declared war on Germany as well (Late 44 or early 45, don't exactly remember), but we're not counting them either.

And let's not pretend that Finland's biggest military endeavors during WW2 weren't against the Soviets.

>Russia
Yeah, but the URSS was a fucking superpower and they retreated on an aera 5 times the size of France before being able to stop the Germans
>Britain
Got defeated and humiliated in 1940, then hid on their island
>Finland
Was a co-belligerant of Germany

Try harder

Meanwgile the reality is that:

1. The BEF was indeed irrelevant in WW1 until late 1916
After that they became quite important, true

2. The failure in 1940 was mostly France's fault, but given how the British performed there (regardless of their overall relevance), they're the ONE nation that should try to mock France for WW2

>then hid on their island
There should be some minimum historical knowledge needed in order to post on this board

>Yeah, but the URSS was a fucking superpower and they retreated on an aera 5 times the size of France before being able to stop the Germans

The USSR lost to finland. It only had 43% of the necessary transport for its equipment. Many units were understaffed and underequipped, and the country had also recently had a mass famine.

France on the other hand had the largest army in Europe and more tanks than Germany.

>Got defeated and humiliated in 1940, then hid on their island

Then why were only 20% of Britain's casualties in 1940?

Britain would go on to lose 350,000 in North Africa, Burma, Italy and France, all of which they were victorious in (Albeit as a sidekick to the usa, except in Burma and to a lesser extent in North Africa).

>Was a co-belligerant of Germany

Except in 1944, when 77,000 Fins defeated 220,000 Germans.
France is pathetic!

Yeah, I should have added

>until Daddy America showed up four years later

>France on the other hand had the largest army in Europe

If that's the case, how comes the German invasion force had slightly more troops than France, Britain and Belgium combined?

Thanks for proving my point, desu

Okay then tell me, where were the British land forces on the European continent before operation Husky?

Are we being raided or something?

>There must have been people lobbying for an extension of the line
The plan had always been for fortifications from the Mediterannean to the Channel; the northern forts were not completed by the time the war started, maybe by '41 or '42 they would've been completely ready.

That said, the entire point of the Maginot line was to prompt an invasion through Belgium. Not even kidding. If you look at the positioning of the French and British armies for the battle of France, you notice a distinct lopsided arrangement that favors meeting the enemy through Belgium. Thing is, they believed that the Ardennes would be a bottleneck for the German army, forcing the Nazis to occupy all-or-most of Belgium before pushing through Flanders into Northern France. Tanks, as the allied forces had learned, were not good at hills. That is, until the Nazis helped out in Spain and saw their tanks break.... then invaded Austria and saw their tanks break.... then pushed into the Sudeten mountains where their tanks still had trouble. Along the way, the engineers addressed the terrain issue and then, finally, the Panzers easily rolled through the Ardennes placing the German army to the South of the main Allied armies, creating the pocket that resulted in Dunkirk & Operation Dynamo.

That said, if I'd blame anyone at that point, it'd be Belgium. They failed to realize that neutrality wasn't an option and allow allied troops inside their borders.

They were decisive in WW1 though.

Barely half of Germany's population
Dramatically inferior manufacturing sector
Inferior materiel in many respects
Dated tactical doctrine
Neglected to fortify much of their border due to strategic miscalculation
Basically West Poland